“You wore that to Mom’s funeral?” my sister said with a sneer, the diamonds on her wrist catching the light as she adjusted the Valdderee heels on her feet. “I mean, I know things are hard for you, but couldn’t you at least have made an effort?” I pressed my lips together to keep from laughing. I had designed this “cheap” dress myself. I owned the label on her shoes. I owned the boutique we were standing in. And one hour earlier, I had personally approved the cancellation of her modeling contract. Then my brother’s bank made the news…

He flinched.

“I suppose I deserve that.”

“This isn’t about what anyone deserves,” I said. “It’s about what is.”

He swallowed hard.

“The FBI came to the house this morning,” he said abruptly. “About Blake. They wanted to know if I knew about his activities. I didn’t, Elise. I swear I didn’t know how deep he was in it.”

“I know,” I said. “You were too focused on your own schemes to notice his.”

“That’s not—” He stopped, reconsidered. “Yes. You’re right.”

We sat in silence while my tea arrived.

Around us, Santa Monica woke up—joggers passing the windows, shopkeepers raising their gates, the ordinary world spinning on while our family’s extraordinary collapse continued.

“I’ll accept your terms,” he said finally. “The house. The downsizing. All of it.”

He lifted his eyes, and they looked… stripped bare.

“But I need to know why. Why help us at all? We’ve been…” He struggled for the word. “We’ve been horrible to you.”

“Yes,” I said. “You have.”

“So why?”

I thought about how to explain twenty years of watching my family from the shadows—loving them despite their casual cruelty—building an empire they couldn’t see while they pitied the life they’d imagined for me.

“Because power isn’t about what you can destroy,” I said finally. “It’s about what you choose to preserve. Mom taught me that.”

I held his gaze.

“You all forgot it. But I never did.”

His eyes filled with tears he was too proud to let fall.

“She would have been proud of you.”

“She was proud of me,” I corrected gently. “The difference is she told me so.”